the best way to prep for an interview: part 1
Interviewing is one of the most nerve-wracking parts of the job search process. You're sitting across from your potential employer with the spotlight on you. You don’t know exactly what questions they are going to ask. You can feel your heartbeat in your chest and your hands might be a little sweaty… The adrenaline can make you forget every great story and experience you’ve ever had.
This has been my experience in many, many interviews. No matter how excited and well-fit for a position I’ve felt, I have always experienced interview anxiety. The best way I have found to prepare for an interview is similar to creating a study guide for a test.
To prepare for your interview, I want you to copy and paste the job description into a blank Word or Google document. Because you are copying it from a website, you’ll need to clean up the formatting. Spend some time making sure it is easy to read and each bullet point of the job description has space beneath it for your notes.
I want you to look at the first bullet point of the job description and determine what relevant experience you have with that skill. You are going to be specific, using details of when you’ve done that skill in the past or utilized a very similar skill. When you are writing your answer, act as though you are writing a script of what you would say in an interview. Here’s an example:
Respond to active candidates and source passive candidates to build a robust pipeline
During my time working at X Company, I served as chair of the hiring committee for two years. As the chair, I was responsible for advertising the job postings and communicating with interested candidates via LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter…
You’ll see that I wrote my answer using “I” and started to tell a story about my previous experience. I tied my answer back to a position that would be on my resume and went into depth about how this aligned with what the job description was looking for.
While you cannot guarantee what the interviewer is going to ask you, you should expect to answer questions about your skills and experience relating to the job. Where do you find the qualifications for the job? In the job description!
Once you have gone through and taken notes on all your experiences relating to what is listed in the job description, you are going to move into phase two of interview prep. We’ll go into depth on this next phase of interview prep in our next blog post!
